Lívia Melzi

Born in 1985 in Brazil, Lívia Melzi lives and works between Paris and São Paulo.

After studying oceanography, she graduated with a Master’s degree in Photography and Contemporary Art from the University Paris VIII, and in 2022 joined the doctoral programme in art and literature at the University of Zurich.

She began in 2018 a research project around Tupinambá cloaks, which originated from the Tupi warrior tribes who were decimated following their first contacts with Europeans in the 16th century. Livia Melzi offers a visual investigation about the Western representation of Tupinambá cloaks, originally used in anthropophagic rituals by the Tupi warrior tribes who lived along the Brazilian coast.

In 2021, she exhibited her work at the 65th Salon de Montrouge, where she won the Grand Prix, as well as at the Rencontres Photographiques du 10ème arrondissement, at the Festival Image Satellite (Nice) and at FUNARTE (Brasília).

In 2022, she participated in the emerging European photography exhibition Circulation(s), at the Athens Photography Festival and in the exhibition “Klaxon-mania: Centenary of the Modern Art Week of São Paulo, 1922 – Paris, 2022” at the Marché Dauphine (Paris) and at Palais de Tokyo (Paris) Tupi or not Tupi.

Lívia Melzi is a laureate of the research and artistic creation grant of the Institut pour la Photographie de Lille and has participated in the artistic residency LABVERDE in the Brazilian Amazon.

Different in style, Lívia Melzi’s work approach consists in examining archives and representations pertaining to identity through her research on Tupinambá capes, which were used for anthropophagic rituals by the Tupi warrior tribes of the Brazilian coast.